FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request — We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle... The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team.

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed's four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook's engineering and product teams.

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed — Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we've learned. We're gathering details now. — At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it's clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features …

Bank Will Allow Customers to Deposit Checks by iPhone — The Internet has taken a lot of the paperwork out of banking, but there is no avoiding paper when someone gives you a check. Now one bank wants to let customers deposit checks immediately — through their phones.

Tr.im Cuts Off Bit.ly's 301works Idea, Wants to Sell — Yesterday, upon hearing that the URL shortening service Tr.im was shutting down, Bit.ly, the largest URL-shortener, stepped in with a proposal. The offer wasn't to buy the service, but rather to propose that Bit.ly host Tr.im's URL …

An Elephant Leaves the Room at Yahoo — Doug Cutting, one of Yahoo's top search and infrastructure software experts, will leave the company later this month and join the Silicon Valley start-up Cloudera. — Mr. Cutting's exit from Yahoo follows on the heels of the company's recent search tie-up with Microsoft.

Source: Dell Mobile Phone Launching In China Within Days — A source with knowledge of the situation tells us that Dell is launching (or at least announcing) a mobile phone in China in the next day or two. We are trying to verify the information and gather more details on the hardware and operating system now.

King Of The Apple Geeks — John Gruber's Daring Fireball is the homepage for Mac nerds. Even top Apple (AAPL) brass tune in regularly. And it's a real business, too, now in its fourth year as Gruber's full-time gig. — Daring Fireball's influence was in full display last week …

Textbooks Now On iPhone, iPod Touch — It appears that rumors of the death of the e-book on the iPhone platform were greatly exaggerated, at least that's what Apple has said in a recent statement. Backing up Apple's official denial of plans to discontinue that side of app store business …

Windows Mobile 6.5 Build 23022: What is Microsoft Up To? — The latest build of Windows Mobile 6.5 from XDA (and by this point, the version we'll see on phones this fall has already been completed) adds several mysterious new features that may imply that an interim build of Windows Mobile …

An Operating System for the Cloud — Google is developing a new computing platform equal to the Internet era. Should Microsoft be worried? — From early in their company's history, Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, wanted to develop a computer operating system and browser.

Guitar Hero 5 gets ready to rock — In the newest version of the Guitar Hero franchise, Guitar Hero 5, as many as four players can all play guitar at the same time, instead of just two. Further, any combination of instruments is now possible. — SAN FRANCISCO—The first couple of weeks …

Sex-predator iPhone app is back in business — Of all the applications that Apple (AAPL) has pulled from the iPhone App Store — and there have been quite a few — none were as creepy, sad or profitable as Offender Locator. — Launched in early June by ThinAir Wireless …

Breakfast Can Wait. The Day's First Stop Is Online. — Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.

Microsoft delivers test versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 — The SQL Server team is unleashing the first widespread test builds of the next version of Microsoft's database, a k a SQL Server 2008 R2 (codenamed “Kilimanjaro"). — Earlier this year, Microsoft officials said to watch …